Researchers claim women who wore perfume with an added chemical found in female sweat were more likely to have sex than those who did not.

The pheromone Athena 10:13 works naturally for younger women as a “sexual attractant” but levels fall after the menopause reports the Mirror.

In the Harvard University-linked study, 22 post-menopausal women used the chemical while 22 others used a placebo.

Women on dates found a 68 per cent increase in sex compared to 41 per cent using plain perfume.

According to New Scientist magazine all women using the spray found a 41 per cent increase in kissing and other physical affection, compared to 14 per cent using the placebo.

State forced to release hundreds of inmates early

By JIM VERTUNO
Associated Press Writer

AUSTIN — Texas has been forced to release more than 500 inmates from prison since August because the state didn’t give them proper advance notice of their parole hearings.

The releases have been forced by a 2004 court ruling that said Texas has violated inmates’ due process rights by not giving them enough time to present the state parole board with evidence to bolster their case.

Most of those released have been inmates serving short sentences for nonviolent drug or property crimes and would have likely qualified for early release anyway, said Carl Reynolds, general counsel for the Texas Board of Criminal Justice.

Dec 15, 2004
Schwarzenegger Tries to Create Worker-Bots for Wal-Mart

   California “Governator” Arnold Schwarzenegger has outraged California workers with a proposal to roll back state laws that protect the right to a lunch break.

   According to the California Labor Federation, the new rules would allow employers to simply notify workers that they are entitled to a lunch break, then force them to work right on through it. This would be a dramatic change from current California laws, which requires a lunch or rest break before the end of a five-hour shift.

   The rule change has been widely praised by the California Restaurant Association. Another beneficiary would be Wal-Mart. The Sacramento Bee has reported that one of the reasons for the new rules is a string of lawsuits filed by workers who had been denied their legally required lunch breaks. The most prominent is a class action suit against Wal-Mart that includes 200,000 people.

   Meanwhile, the Schwarzenegger administration claims that the proposal is merely about offering employees flexibility.

   Schwarzenegger’s administration pushed the rules through by having the California Division of Labor Standards Enforcement issue emergency regulations.

Children Charged With Felonies Over Violent Drawings

The 9- and 10-year-old boys from a special education class in Ocala were hauled away in handcuffs, charged with a felony of threatening another person.

Police said the child depicted in the pencil-and-crayon drawings complained to his teacher, who alerted school authorities who called police.

Sticker stuck in cop’s craw

By Brian D. Crecente, Rocky Mountain News
January 25, 2005

A Denver police sergeant is under investigation for allegedly threatening to arrest a woman Monday for displaying on her truck a derogatory bumper sticker about President Bush.

“He told her that this was a warning and that the next time he saw her truck, she was going to be arrested if she didn’t remove the sticker,” said Alinna Figueroa, 25, assistant manager of The UPS Store where the confrontation took place.

Police Sgt. Michael Karasek walked into the store and confronted Shasta Bates, the truck’s owner. “He said, ‘You need to take off those stickers because it’s profanity and it’s against the law to have profanity on your truck,’” Bates said. “Then he said, ‘If you ever show up here again, I’m going to make you take those stickers off and arrest you. Never come back into that area.’” .

Karasek wrote down the woman’s license-plate number and then told her: “You take those bumper stickers off or I will come and find you and I will arrest you.”

Man wrongly declared dead

By SARAH OVASKA, Staff Writer

Medical examiner J.B. Perdue was startled when he saw the body he was examining take a shallow breath.

Larry D. Green was lying in an unzipped body bag in the morgue at the Franklin County Sheriff’s Department complex Monday night while Perdue began documenting his injuries to certify a cause of death.

“I had to look twice myself just to make sure it was there, that’s how subtle it [the breath] was,” Perdue said.

Green’s status was upgraded — from dead to alive — close to two hours after he was hit by a car on a dark road.

Emergency medical technicians declared Green dead and placed him in a body bag for transport to the morgue.

Small Names, Big Checks

By Michael Scherer

January 20, 2005

Therese Shaheen, the former U.S. envoy to Taiwan, wrote a $250,000 check so that her Asian business clients can rub shoulders this week with George W. Bush. “Outsiders are fascinated by the president’s inaugural, so it’s nice for them,” says Shaheen, who resigned her post as the head of the U.S. diplomatic mission to Taiwan last April and returned to the private sector. “The inauguration is always good for business development.”

Only a few people, including the president’s staff, know that Shaheen is responsible for the donation, which entitles her clients to tickets to top-tier events with President Bush and Vice President Cheney. That is because she donated the funds through the Strongbow Technologies Corporation, a company that lists no phone number and whose mailing address is a post office box in the Maryland suburbs of Washington D.C.

Shaheen, the owner of Strongbow, has no plans to identify the foreign clients she is bringing to dine and dance with the President. But it is not hard to guess why they are working with her. In addition to her State Department experience, Shaheen’s former business partner, and the former co-owner of Strongbow, was Richard Lawless, an ex-CIA agent who now works at the Pentagon as deputy undersecretary of defense for Asia-Pacific affairs. He has recently been discussed as a candidate to replace the head of the CIA’s clandestine unit.

Lawless and Shaheen founded a company in 1987 called U.S. Asia Commercial, which partnered with the president’s brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, to work on deals with Asian investors. Shaheen’s husband is Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita, who also serves as a special assistant to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Nonetheless, she said her involvement in the inauguration was not political.

From chicksdigbooks

Fla. Worker Finds Dead Baby On Trash Conveyer Belt

Scientists say more than 40,000 parasites and 250 types of bacteria are exchanged during a typical French kiss.

The study says couples also exchange 0.7 grams of protein, 0.45 grams of fat and 0.19 grams of other organic substances.

The results come from a study carried out to publicise the advantages of good oral hygene in Sweden.